Various systems and methods exist for structural heath monitoring (“SHM”) and/or non-destructive examination (“NDE”) of plates and plate-like structures such as those used on pressure vessels, aircraft fuselages and wings, ship hulls and storage tanks to identify only several possible uses. However, these systems and monitoring/examination techniques are mostly based on point-to-point inspections and are not capable of performing rapid large area monitoring and/or inspection. Guided wave inspection of such structures is also employed, wherein at one or more guided wave modes are transmitted and received in said structures to carry out the NDE and/or SHM. However, such guided wave techniques using shear horizontal-type guided wave modes with piezoelectric transducers are often limited by the directionality of d15 shear bar elements.